e simple operation of clipping the hair from between
his toes, to prevent the "balling-up" of the snow, took two men to
perform, one to sit on the dog and the other to ply the scissors, and
was accompanied always with such howls and squeals as would make a
hearer think we were flaying him alive.

Nanook's acquaintance with horses began in Fairbanks the first season I
owned him, before I had had the harness upon him, when he was rising two
years old. The dogs and I were staying at the hospital we had just
established--because in those days there was nowhere else to
stay--waiting for the winter. One of the mining magnates of the infancy
of the camp (broken and dead long since; Bret Harte's lines, "Busted
himself in White Pine and blew out his brains down in 'Frisco," often
occur to me as the sordid histories of to-day repeat those of fifty
years ago) had imported a saddle-horse and, as the mild days of that
charming autumn still deferred the snow, he used to ride out past the
hospital for a canter.

The dog had learned to lift the latch of the gate of the hospital yard
with his nose and get out, and when I put a wedge above the latch for
greater security he learned also to circumvent that precaution. And
whenever the horse and his rider passed, Nanook would open the gate and
lead the whole pack in a noisy pursuit that changed the canter to a run
and brought us natural but mortifying remonstrance.

The rider had just passed and the dogs had pursued as usual, and I had
rushed out and recalled them with difficulty. Nanook I had by the
collar. Dragging him into the yard, shutting the gate, and putting in
the wedge, I picked up a stick and gave him a few sharp blows with it.
Then flinging him off, I said: "Now, you stay in here; I'll give you a
sound thrashing if you do that again!" I was just getting acquainted
with him then. The moment I loosed his collar the dog went deliberately
to the gate, stood on his hind legs while he pulled out the wedge with
his teeth, lifted the latch with his nose and swung open the gate, and
standing in the midst turned round and said to me: "Bow-_wow_-wow-wow-wow-_wow_!"
It was so pointed that a passer-by, who had paused to see the
proceedings and was leaning on the fence, said to me: "Well, you know
where _you_ can go to. That's the doggonedest dog I ever seen!"

[Sidenote: PARTNERS]

It was a pleasure to come back to Nanook after any long absence--a
pleasure I was used to look forward to.